Twitter @haarsager

Sunday, 21 May 2006

At its first analyst conference since 2003, Yahoo dropped several tasty tidbits about the future direction of the company. ...¶...Video content will go front and center, and [Yahoo chairman and CEO Terry] Semel thinks that A/V
materials will soon be as common and important as text is today. "Video
is going to be a presence of everything we do," he said, "and it will
be another way of communicating with people in a very pleasing way." To
help facilitate that movement, a new inline video player has been
developed with an eye to presenting such material with a consistent
look and feel across various Yahoo sites and properties. (Maybe the
site as a whole could get a look-and-feel makeover to match the new front page, as well.) No doubt the success of YouTube is urging Yahoo to join the recent lineup of competitors
to that site.And there are already plans to put the video expansion plans into action. Semel "strongly suggested" that there are talks underway with TV networks who want to find a (new) partner to host their online content selections. ...

... Strategically positioned between the audience and the talent, TV
networks protected their cash flow by resisting the growing economic
pressure to bring the interactivity, e-commerce, and community of the web to TV's huge, loyal audiences.
But Tivo cracked that dam, and over ten years the crack expanded to
jeopardize the integrity of that industry structure. Exploiting
computers and the internet to displace channel-surfing with random
access content, DVR's so enhanced the TV experience that viewers changed their habits, causing the Dammed Networks to sprout dangerous leaks of ad revenue. ...

... After
an initial burst of growth, mobile content--which can include
everything from ring tones to video clips--is struggling to break out
of the early adopter segment and achieve mass consumption. It is too
soon to forecast the demise of this promising new field, but it is
evident that wireless entertainment is wavering during a crucial
transition to third-generation mobile telephony, or 3G. ¶ According to ... M:Metrics,
consumption of wireless content has flatlined. After eight quarters of
rapid growth, sales in the two main categories, ring tones and mobile
games, have stalled. Every month in the U.S., only 10% of mobile
subscribers download a ring tone to their phones, and less than 4%
download games. Text messaging is holding steady at about 33%. ¶ On
advanced 3G handsets, consumption is about three-times stronger than on
the older, more widespread 2.5G phones. But 3G unit numbers remain
tiny. Two years after the introduction of video on cell phones, 2
million Americans, just 1% of the market, pay $10 to $15 per month for
the service. Unless the 3G audience expands rapidly, current levels of
investment in the creation and delivery of rich content such as 3-D
games and video may be unsustainable. ...

The Software Defined
Radio Forum has released a new report, "Software Defined Radio
Technology for Public Safety," that outlines potential benefits of
software defined radio (SDR) as well as critical issues that need to be
addressed. The culmination of a year-long study on how SDR technology
could impact public safety communications, the report was written by
the Forum's Public Safety Special Interest Group (SIG), which includes
public safety personnel, public safety land mobile radio (LMR) vendors,
software developers, regulators, commercial cellular companies,
academic and government researchers, and contractors supporting federal
interoperability programs. ¶
The report notes
that most public safety LMR products now being developed use SDR
technology to support multiple protocols but that the real promise lies
in SDR supporting multi-band and multi-service radios. Multi-band
radios potentially include "waveforms" (software that controls radio
operating parameters, such as frequency and modulation) that allow
reconfiguring as a VHF, UHF or 800 MHz radio, as needed – a big step in
addressing the challenges of interoperable communications.
Multi-service radios could be reconfigured to operate on LMR,
commercial cellular or 802.11 systems, which would help realize a
system-of-systems concept and provide significantly greater
communications capabilities in a single device than are available
today. ...

... Fox's acquisition thesis is a bit more complicated - but predicated on
a much deeper understanding of the new media value chain. Fox invests
in domains which are hypersocial (discontinuous shifts in social
connectivity) or hypercultural (discontinuous shifts in cultural
specificity): sports, karaoke, music. ¶ Further, Fox invests at
the edge of the new value chain: at the interface with consumers.
Further, Fox invests in the three roughly distinct models which live
there - which are what we talk about at bubblegen a huge amount:
markets, networks, and communities. ¶ Why? Because Fox understands
the deep economics of new media. Value capture in the new media value
chain is a function of market power. And market power is a function of
attention. And attention is allocated most efficiently by markets,
networks and communities. ...

To which Jeff Jarvis pushes back some in Enabling vs. owning. Link: BuzzMachine. This is followed by a response from Haque in Outfoxed. Link: Bubblegeneration. Very thoughtful exchange, as one would expect from these two.

However progressive Fox may be in its media strategies in the U.S., it doesn't stop co-owned News International from being just another disruption-threatened company trying to use the political process to slow progress on the part of others. See UK Media Groups Unite Against BBC's Digital Expansion. Slow down until we catch up. Link: paidContent.org. --Dennis

Saturday, 20 May 2006

I was part of a panel called "Stations in an On-Demand World" this morning at PBS Showcase and used a PowerPoint deck which you can access here. The presentation was a variation of a post to this weblog called Public Media Strategies that I made earlier this month.

Bob Cringely and Terry Heaton were on a panel at a PBS Showcase seminar for general managers this morning.

Notes:

Cringely, who does the NerdTV program and a technology column for PBS.org, said to look at the local aspect of the future. There are really only two broadband providers in your community, the cable company and the phone company. Their connection to the Internet is expensive, but their connection to you is free (you're paying for it). You ought to be putting your server at your phone company or cable company. Use consortia for distribution.

Heaton, a consultant, talked about his experience with commercial client WKRN in Nashville. He said, be careful not to paint yourself into an "on-demand" only corner. The Internet allows you to be anything -- not just a content provider. He quoted Glenn Reynolds: "We're seeing the triumph of personal technology over mass technology." Two important value propositions: 1) Media is unbundled at the point of origin and rebundled at the point of consumption. 2) Mediated people make their own media. He also quoted Gordon Borrell: "The deer now have guns. Get into the ammunition business." Why should you do that?, he asks: The barriers to entry are low for everybody. You don't have to be just a television station. People want to know what you know and do what you do. The Internet is a social phenomenon. Aggregators have the greatest value at the point of consumption. WKRN operates 16 web sites, two of which are aggregators of local blogs in the area (Nashville Is Talking aggregates 400 weblogs).

Update 5/21/2006:Here's Terry's commentary on this session: The "broadcaster" mindset is a tough nut to crack. Link: Pomo Blog.